THIS VOLUME, like the one that preceded it, is based on a course taught
at the Faculté des Lettres et Sciences Humaines at the University of
Paris a few years ago. These lectures, like the previous ones, were not
written down in advance. My friend Irving Kristol succeeded in convincing me that these remarks, which were first mimeographed for the
convenience of my students, deserved to be corrected, revised, and
finally offered to a larger audience. The indulgence of those who reviewed the first volume—even those who were most severe—prompts
me not to reply to them but to point out the purpose and limits of this
historical study.

The criticism most frequently addressed to the first volume was the
lack of precision in my definition of sociology. How is one to reconstruct the past of a discipline whose objectives, methods, and
boundaries are not exactly determined? Such, in one form or another,
is the question that was asked of me or the reproach that was addressed
to me; a question or reproach that was all the more legitimate because
the English title promised something more than, or in any case something different from, the French title.

The course was entitled "The Great Doctrines of Historical Sociology." A doctrine is more than or different from a theory. The
word doctrine suggests a complex body of judgments of fact and
judgments of value, a social philosophy as well as a system of concepts
or of general propositions. Moreover, the adjective historical linked
with the term sociology indicated the orientation of my curiosity: I

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